How to Grow African Violets from Leaf Cuttings

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Describes another noun--for example, " boat race," " dog food. Please ask your budtender for the redemption code for this offer and enter it below. The ideal proportions to aim for are a blend of: Sync recipes from the community. Should get first new potatoes by mid Febuary. Man, Its fun to finally use that knowledge.

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Simply add about 6 inches of compost. Put in the seed potatoes and cover with a few inches of compost. As the tops grow up add more compost and reap the rewards at the end of the season. Get a can with wheels and it makes for easy moving and is reusable for years Actually, no, wheels on the garbage can are not terribly useful — unless you have a seriously heavy-duty garbage can.

My first plant is in a can with wheels. I broke the handle on mine trying to tip it back, and the weight of the dirt, plant and water makes the can kind of sag around the wheels. So I just put them in a good place and leave them alone all winter. I grew mine in a plastic garbage can. I drilled holes in the bottom and had left over red cedar mulch so I used that. It worked like a charm and i do it every year now. I got the green can at Walmart for under 20 bux. Basically, all you need to do is drill 5 holes in the bottom.

One in the center and 1 on each corner for drainage. Be sure not to over water potatoes because the bottom ones will rot. Holes will help drain excess water to prevent the rotting. I also drilled holes on the sides of the garbage can for air circulation — gets really warm.

They were using larger beds, but same concept. We live in a very short-season area, but a bed this small could be easily protected or even grown in a greenhouse. You need not buy lumber. There are plenty of used wooden pallets that are free for the taking. They are usually made of hard woods and last a long time. Just cut the pieces from them. You will recycle, help clean up Mother Earth and enjoy a bountiful harvest. Before sailing the seven seas, I was privileged to be a steward of a 98 acre organic farm in south central Kentucky.

Want to try this potato growing concept but what about potato seedlings. Any suggestions for potato starter seeding varities sources etc. Can you just carve left over potato that came from supermarket allow to dry then plant. Can you start grow inside in say basement then move out doors as weather warms up. Suggestions on seeding and seed preperation for best results. Store-bought potatoes have been treated with a growth inhibitor to keep them from sprouting. The absence of this inhibitor is what makes seed potatoes seed potatoes.

I use organic potatoes from the store for my crops. In fact, if you leave an organic potato in the mesh bags they come in, they will all begin to sprout within 30 days.

My red potatoes from the grocery store were sprouting so I thought I would try cutting them and planting the eyes and sprouts in the container with my tomato plants. I now live in an apartment so I am limited in the space. I am delighted to see red potatoes popping up out of the top of the soil! I am amazed at their size! I have no idea what may be developing below the surface.

I guess I will find out when the tomatoes are finished producing and I pull the plants out. Simply put one potato in each pot. After the plants die back, I leave them in the pots until I need them.

But be sure to harvest them before a freeze or they will be ruined. Regarding seed potatoes, I used to buy them. Now I just use supermarket potatoes…. As long as they are not moldy, incredibly shriveled, dried up old potatoes will grow. Regarding those compost bags some call them Smart Bags, you can make your own by taking landscaping cloth and sewing up the side to make a tube. The wood seems like a better idea. I used plastic garbage cans med. Raise the bed as the plant grows.

Add loses soil-basically mulch 3. Use late season plants. Dont use tires- could be toxic. Anyways just let them get about 6 to 8 inches tall and then cover with compost or straw and repeat. When they start flowering i stop and let them finish making their taters. New to a town at the top of the coast of Maine, I decided to do it with truck tires and convinced my husband to get some for me.

Naturally all the potato farmers up there wondered what I was up to. Struggling we managed to get the first tire off, after that we just started toppling the stack. I harvested 5 potatoes, just 5!!! I even had a perforated pipe in the center for watering and aeration. I do think that was a good idea.

Zero cost, lots of potatoes. Why must every blog or article on the Internet devolve into politicking? Politics are the duty of a responsible citizen. Apathy leads to fascism and slavery.

While politics may be the duty of citizens it does not need to be brought up in every discussion. Even easier to handle than soil, use straw! As the plants grow, add more straw. For harvesting, just push the straw aside, take what you want and put the straw back.

No digging, no heavy soil to shift, and the straw beaks down over the winter to enrich your soil. What i do not understand is if all you add is straw what is the potato plant going to FEED from?

If there is not any dirt or compost and the straw is not going to be able to breakdown all that fast -does not the potato plant STARVE?? The plants use photosynthesis to make food, like most plants.

Then you can add straw to encourage more potatoes. You can always spray with a foliar feed fertilizer, too, such as soluble kelp. And water with compost tea every couple of weeks.

The understanding I have, is that the roots stay at the bottom, with good soil, and straw or whatever it is, is just to provide a dark place where potatoes form. It is still feeding on dirt and compost. You can also use pine straw to cover! You can also use it for mulch in your garden. Many of my neighbors in FL have pine trees and rake and throw the pine straw in the trash.

This way you can use things that would many would consider trash, and it makes your soil more acid for those plants that like acidity! I think I will try this in my poly tunnel. We have three acres but this will allow for very early planting.

Should get first new potatoes by mid Febuary. Much easier access to the potatoes and yams. Pantyhose stretch, you can cut with knife and then re-tie. I am in Scotland and this sounds ideal for my small garden.

I am definately going to try this. What variety for our climate. If not you will have straw growing everywhere and vigorously. The best sustitute for staw is Hay. Most hay is seedless when harvested. It has the same characteristics as straw for its use, breaks down at the same rate,is a great addition to compost and ammendments for your soil.

Plus in a vegetable garden it acts as a wonder mulch to help retain moisture, suppress weeds and helps deter some pests. Not to metion it looks good as well. I work at a state historic site and design and maintain the working kitchen garden and have been using hay for over 10 years. You sterilize straw or grass trimmings, or lawn-grass cuttings, even leaves—by putting in a black garbage bag, tie it, leave it in the hot sun and any seed in the straw or grass will die, and then you can use it as compost for your potatoes or anything else without the danger of growing weeds in your garden.

Any root crops do better in straw compost than in dirt, especially in hard clay or soil with poor drainage. I do the same, but the other way round. I use the spent straw from my coops to mulch with. They say that you should not use straw for your chickens and hay is better. Only because straw is more tube-ish, and gives great hiding places to the bugs that are a nuisance to your chickens.

Just some information I have run across. I use hay for my chickens. Here in Texas, the hay if full of grass and weed seeds. Straw is a by-product of raising grain such as oats and wheat. The oat and wheat seeds have been removed. Eva, great advice except you are backwards. Hay has seed ie. I am not sure that pallets are a good idea. Many are soaked in chemical preservatives.

Years ago arsenic was the potion of choice but lord knows what is put on them in strange countries. A lot of them may be hardwood and Ok……………but then dont ever cut them indoors as the dust is hazardous. As I am already the prophet of doom could i also add its not a good idea to inhale smoke from burning pallets.

Sometimes they have oil or other substances on them, so it is something to be careful with. But in general, pallets are safe to use. Actually they are treated. All pallets are not treated. I work for a pallet company. Pallets being shipped from one country to another country must be treated or heated in a kiln.

Most pallet companies I know heat treat the pallets in a kiln. The reason for treating with a chemical or a kiln is to kill any bugs that might be hiding in the wood. This stops the transfer of bugs from one country to another.

But pallets used exclusively within the US and not shipped outside the US do not need to be treated and are not treated because of the cost of the treatment. I forgot to add, treated wood also has a green tint to it, so you can tell it apart from untreated. CCA, or, chromated copper arsenic, is the main culprit you all speak of. There are processes that do not use the heavier metals, and do not toxify. At one time, they were more expensive, but I think pricing has leveled out a bit.

Man, Its fun to finally use that knowledge. That seems like a lot of trouble, to dig out the potatoes from the bottom. Never any digging or hard work. Yes this works wonders.

My Dad used to dig a trench then lay the potatoes in and just add straw, as the potatoes grew he added more straw. But very easy picking and no cleaning, they are already clean and seem to me to grow bigger. I have a raised vegetable garden bed. Once in awhile during the winter, the soil is turned over.

There are some leaves in the garden bed too. Wow, I had russet, red bliss, yukon gold potatoes and all from the peelings thrown into the vegetable garden bed. Bountiful supply in the spring. My great-grandparents never bought seed potatoes. They of course wanted to eat all the potatoes food was scarce in their day , so they would save potato eyes on the peelings to replant in the spring. I always thought you had to have a chunk of potato with the eye, but not so.

The peelings with eyes will regrow potatoes! They also covered their potatoes lightly with soil and straw and just added more straw or lawn clippings. My father, raised in Mississippi, said his mother used to create a manure hotbed under a small area of the garden to start some vegetables early.

About a 4 foot thick bottom layer of hot manure, then add soil to plant on the top-most layer. The heat from the manure layer would warm up the planting soil enough to start earlier during cold weather. The older generations sure knew how to grow things!

I grow organically and have always had bumper crops without fertilizing during the growing season by simply tilling in good organic fertilizer we have cow, chicken and pig manure mix on the farm in the fall or early spring. Seems like the fall tilling of the manure works better—time to leach into the soil?? Thanks for the tips. The older generations are sages. I have a large back yard but everything I grow tends to spread everywhere and turns into a mess, so I like the confinement.

The tire idea sounds excellent as well. It sounds practical to me. And by the way — I could eat all pounds of potatoes. Good article, and good information — thank you. Even though regular pine boards get termites in them and rot rather fast, try not to use treated boards. The plants are supposed to be able to pull the chemicals out of the treated boards.

Its better to replace rotten pine boards then to risk getting chemicals in your food. Have you ever tried the black landscape fabric?

Lay it down put potato on top lay next fabric on top cut small hole on top of potato , put straw or hay on top water potatoes grow between fabrics. Funny, there is a lot of cedar on the family land. Cedar is resistant to rot and insects. Good red cedar can last decades, Might want to try it. Chestnut was good as well, but is almost extint, due to a disease. We have used the stainless steel tub from our defunct washer for growing potatoes for the past few years, although we have only planted one layer.

I will be trying the suggestion of planting on the very bottom and then covering the plant as it grows. To stop the dirt from leaking out the holes, put a liner if weed barrier fabric around the inside of the tub.

Hi, Thanks for the great info. I blogged about potatoes and included your link. My customers love information and I love to bring it to them. This is something they could do on their own. Last year I build one of these potato wood bins as you called them. I went to my local builder store and had them cut the boards to the length that I needed and bought the screws. I planted my potatoes and grew 40 lbs of them, the best tasting potatoes ever.

Two things I noticed when I did not water them enough that layer had little to no potatoes, could estimate by my vacation time and where the soil had not been softened with compost that layer had few potatoes. I have had excellent potatoes all winter. The funny part was I was gone and then got sick and forgot about picking them so after we had a major freeze here in Colorado I expected them to be mush but I needed to take my bin down so started digging them out and it turned out they had not been affected by the freeze at all.

Excellent way to grow…how many different things. Just wanted to share this with others, I did not get my lbs but who cares and with paying more attention to them with regular watering and good soil who knows…I was thrilled for my first year it was GREAT. Hardwood leaves, especially oak carry nematodes that will keep your crop on the smallish, disfigured side. A friend told me to buy a large bag of compost poke holes in the bottome for drainage and cut a slit on top and plant potatoes in the bag.

To havest slice the side and pull out only what you need. This is the method I am going to use. My cousin is a gardener and has been pyramid gardening. I am buying the garden soil.. Then cover that with hay.

Compost would work too. I see no need for the box or container. I think potato plants are pretty. My mother use to grow sweet potato vines on her kitchen window sill.

Place toothpicks closer to the bottom of the sweet potato as supports. Then put in a glass container with enough water to cover the bottom third of the potato. It is grown for the foliage only and a very pretty vine. I did try planting some store potatoes once and they were a complete flop.

If you save from your own potatoes each year you should only have to buy seed potatoes once. I cut them in sections making sure each section had an eye or two. I had the best potatoes. Due to cold wet spring I was late getting to the garden and all the seed potatoes were sold out. Guy at the store suggested going to Whole Foods and getting small Organic potatoes as these supposedly are not treated with chemicals to retard sprouting.

They are in the ground in my box. How can I grow the same size potato tubers for minimmizing sorting needs. I do not see any post about actual yields. How accurate is the pound claim or even LB? Can anyone who has actually done a vertical potato garden with success say what variety of potato was used. I have read that these are definitely not good for vertical culture. Please, if you have actually have good success with vertical culture either wire cages, boxes, or pallets , could you post which variety you used?

My husband and I tried to grow potatoes in the boxes like above. It is about mid June and all of the potato plants died. We dug them all up and no potatoes at all. Can anyone tell us what happened? One inch left exposed is not enough to support a healthy plant. You were only overzealous. Remember, the worst farmer is the one who doesnt try. Trying too hard is another issue. Youi just needed to let them grow a bit more, and cover a bit less.

I read the same thing. Plants still need sunlight….. My first effort failed because the spud had NOT been planted properly. TvI love this thread! If your potatoes turn green from the Sun they are poisonous! I put grass clippings on. I had several levels of the wood added on. Straw would be be better. I agree with Kim. It sounds like they came off easily because the stem of the potato plant had rotted. Either too wet, which grass clippings really hold moisture, or possibly too hot as the clippings started to decompose.

Ever reach into a pile of grass clippings and feel the heat, moisture and watch the steam rise up? This happened to one of my potato plants in a black container. I can't let anything happen to this plant as I received it from my Mom all those years ago from clippings from her plant. I lost my mom in April Take your finger and scrape at the brown spot.

If it does come off, then you are likely dealing with scale, an insect pest. You should scrape off all of the ones you can see, then create a solution of 1 part rubbing alcohol and 1 part water. Use a cotton swab to wipe down the areas where the pests were. Hi, I've been growing my spider plant for years and have repotted a few times. It has been doing well until the other day when I went to water it.

There was water sitting on top of the soil from its last watering a week or so ago and the leaves were drooping. I've never had this type of problem with my plants so I put more soil on top, which it probably needed anyway, and did not put any more water in it.

It's been almost a week and I felt the soil, which is still wet. Is it just being dormant for awhile? Sounds like it may need to be repotted into some dry soil. But when you replant make sure you break up the root ball a little bit. I just bought my first spider plant. I am wondering what pups are and when to harvest them. I got some small shoots off a coworker spider plant and put them in soil.

How long does it take them to grow? I have one inside the house and a couple outside on my deck. The pups should be well-rooted in a few weeks. You can put them back outside once they have settled into their pots. Otherwise, just keep the plants watered and out of direct sunlight, which can burn spider plants. To make your plant flower, leave it! Plenty of water during its growing season.

Once the leaves start to get large it will then start to put out legs and the flowers come on those. But they will only put out leaves until the pot is too small. I would show you mine but can't send pic. Spider plants send out shoots from the plant that will produce small white flowers when the mother plant starts getting root bound. Generally, they don't send out shoots which is the plant looking for new soil.

Once the new baby plants are a couple inches across, then you can plant them. Either pinch them off and plant them or set the end flower of top of a small pot with soil until it roots itself. I bought them as babies and so I put them in a pot of their own and had then for bought 2 weeks and have them sitting on the west wall of my den so then get the east sun in the morning.

Is that enough sun for them? That may not be enough. They like bright but indirect sun. Can all the little offshoots still be potted? I've had some trouble with plants in the past due to inconsistent watering.

What approach do you use to have enough, but not too much? Specifically, what will happen to my spider plant if I over water it? I am starting to see some brown streaks within the inside white vittatum variety stripes, near the end. And last question, sunlight. You may have been noticing that the packaging is changing for Grow Wild. Wherever possible, we use no packaging.

We use no plastic but instead are using recyclable cellophane and compostable paper. During the winter months we put all greeen leaf in brown paper bags - and have found that this worked very well last winter. It was a long winter so there was lots of time to trial it!

However, when the warm weather came, we found the leaves wilted as we looked at them and so made the decision to revert to the plant-based and recyclable cellophane as and when necessary. We would have preferred not to have done this becasue the cellophane is recyclable but not compostable. We will let you know of progress since we are constantly on the lookout, and things are moving quite quickly now on the compostable materials front. In the meantime, please give us feedback about your produce quality.

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